“Are they talking?”
“No, and they’re not only not talking but, in many cases, they’re saying stuff like, ‘You know? It was just a friend of a friend.’”
“Great,” he said. “That’s not helpful.”
“No, it’s not. What did you find out?”
“Only that Elena was there as part of the installation, and, when she stepped away, the guests were all shocked to realize that the painting continued on her backside. She had been painted all the way around. But those who knew Cayce’s work said it was fairly common in some cases. I don’t think any of them realized it was only common in Elena’s case.”
“Was Elena with anybody?” Andy asked.
“She had several glasses of wine and enjoyed mingling and talking with various people,” he said, “but she didn’t appear to be with anyone.”
“Did she leave alone?”
“She called a cab and stepped out as soon as the cab pulled up.”
“Anybody see her get in the cab?”
“Apparently somebody pulled up, who she must have known, and offered her a ride instead.”
“So, we don’t have an actual cab that delivered her anywhere?”
“No, but I did track down the cabbie,” Richard noted. “He said that he had been called for the fare, but then she gave him a twenty and told him that she had another ride.”
“Shit,” Andy said. “So we still don’t know who she left with. No video cameras?”
“Tons of them,” Richard said. “Steven is running through them right now.” He groaned and sat back. “I’m about to reach out to some of her other friends again.”
“Nobody answering?”
“Either not home, not at work, or not answering.”
“Are they ghosting you?”
“It’s possible,” Richard said, “but deliberate? I don’t know.” Just then his phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Detective Richard Henderson here.”
“You’ve left several messages on my phone,” a tired male voice said. “I’m Mr. Johnson. What can I do for you, Detective?”
“Have you heard about Elena?”
After an awkward silence at the other end, Mr. Johnson spoke, his voice hoarse from tears. “Yes, that’s why I haven’t been taking calls. I was very good friends with her.”
At that, Richard launched into his list of questions.
“No, I didn’t see her that night at the installation.”
“Why not? Wasn’t it a big deal for your friend?”
“Of course, and I was delighted for her, but I’ve been to many, many of them, and that night I wasn’t feeling well.”
“When did you hear from her last?”
“Just before the installation. I sent her a good luck text.”
“When did you hear the news?”
“Through the news media yesterday,” Mr. Johnson said, and then he broke off to clear his throat. “There’s no good way to hear it, but a personal message would have been better. A lot better. Hearing it like that was … horrible.”
“It’s taken us some time to track down who she was close to in her world, and we still haven’t found any family members. Does that sound right?”
“She didn’t have any family that she was close to,” Mr. Johnson replied.
“Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it that way. It shouldn’t have gone to the media until the family was notified, or at least not until the next day anyway,” he said.
“I think her father lives in Switzerland,” he said sadly. “They didn’t have anything to do with each other.”
“Siblings?”
“No.”
“Mother?”
“She took off when Elena was just a child.”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned.”
He provided the father’s name. No location other than Switzerland, but it was a start. “What about other friends?”
“Well, there’s her artist friend, Cayce, of course, and Elena had several other modeling friends.” He provided those names as well. “And one of them was a male.”
Richard studied that male name and circled it. “Do all these people do the same kind of modeling, the body modeling?”
“They all do all kinds of modeling,” the man said. “I used to do body modeling myself.”
“Under your current name of Johnson?”
“Yes. I used to model as Joe Johnson. And, yes, that’s my number you called,” Joe said drily.
Richard made a mental note, jotting that down. “Was there ever anything creepy about this body modeling?”
“Any time you take your clothes off for art,” he said, “it depends on how the artist presents it. Cayce is always very, very clear about a celebration of the human body, looking within, looking deep within to her art, in order to see what it was. It isn’t just a gimmick for her.”
“A gimmick?”
“Yeah. Her art involves almost like a trick of the eyes, you know? A trick with the lighting or an optical illusion somehow. That kind of stuff. But she’s done installations where she had multiple models, and nobody knew until they moved.”
“That takes some talent.”
“Cayce is extremely talented,” Joe said.
“Is there any reason to think she might have had something to do with Elena’s death?”
A gasp of shock came, then silence at the other end. “No. I can’t imagine that there would be. No.”
“A falling-out among friends, a business relationship gone bad?”
“No, not at all,” Joe said, his voice much stronger. “You’re barking up the wrong tree there.”
“Do you know of anyone Elena was afraid of, ex-boyfriends or anything?”
“She’s had a lot of boyfriends,” Joe said. “But it’s not—I can’t even call them boyfriends really. She was somebody who made friends easily. She loved and lost just as fast.”
“Cayce called her a butterfly.”
“That describes Elena exactly,” Joe said sadly. “She flitted through life, adding a little bit of light and love everywhere, every time.”
“Do you think anybody would have wanted to kill her over a relationship like that?”
“Everybody wanted more from her,” he said instantly. “And that was the thing about her. She was light itself. The kind of light you can never hold on to. It slipped right through your fingers. You want it, but you can’t hold on to it. So, anybody who thought that they could touch her and keep her was heading into any relationship with Elena in the wrong way.”
“Does anybody come to mind who may have wanted to do
